Porn Publishers' IP-As-Guilt Claims Head to Court → Depends on how BiTorrent works?

Some time ago I tried to download documents from a legitimate website and was requested to install BitTorrent Software on my computer. I did not install the software because of the potential of being accused of piracy. Since I do not use BitTorrent Software maybe someone can give me a heads up. Does BitTorrent search for files on every computer running BitTorrent Software for the desired file, or is there a database indicating the IP addresses where the desired files are stored? If the BitTorrent Software searches all computers how would the IP police determine which computers the files were being downloaded from, when many BitTorrent users may not have the files?

You are thinking of the Kazaa/Napster days where the software would auto-share files/folders, and sometimes even entire hard drives. The torrent protocol requires a torrent file be created for anything that is to be "shared". You would have to manually create the torrent file to share something. And there are a lot of companies using torrents for legitimate distribution, so don't be scared off simply by the software.

BitTorrent is not KaZaA.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi ··· ng_files

Unless you started to download from an existing torrent and then you join the swarming, starting to share the file you're downloading as you download it. It still requires a manual step of clicking the link (or otherwise adding an existing torrent file).